With the arrival of Er Shun and Da Mao on their very own Panda FedEx Express last week, almost all of Canada stopped to welcome the darling bears. Animals, especially exotic ones, have a long history of being used in diplomatic gestures.

There's a new sickness sweeping across Canada that medical experts have diagnosed as Selective Parochialism Disease. It afflicts mostly the ideological, and in particular those who think that cooking the planet for our children is a good idea.